Volume 1 Number 7

Hi Folks,

Well, whether you are rejoicing in the risen Lord or simply chowing down on chocolate eggs this weekend, I hope this newsletter finds you well.   My colleagues in Western Australia are probably like me and taking stock of a very busy and productive first term.

In this week's article I'm hoping to provide a rationale and stimulate some thinking about how to provide meaningful opportunities for Drama students that move beyond theatre preparation into an integrated curriculum where students can learn in all modalities in, through and about Drama.  The other major attraction is that these festivals provide a vastly extended audience so students tend to approach their work with greater attention to preparation, content and style.

HINT:  Look for events that focus on learning and process rather than subordinating education to the demand for spectacular product. 

SUGGESTION: If you can't find such an event - start your own.  Get a local festival happening the first year.. extend to regional when the interest and benefits are demonstrated... then why stop there  Build it to a state or national level.

LESSON/ACTIVITY IDEA

• Using performing arts festivals to expand curricular opportunities. 

To begin with, I'm almost willing to bet at the outset that Drama teachers in Africa, South America and Asia will be saying what's so special about that idea.  The notion of Drama for Development is well established in those parts of the world and in some cases provides an essential part of national education programmes.  I know when I was in Kenya that the crucial AIDS/HIV education campaigns drew heavily on students developing Drama performances to both learn and inform about life style practices and the spread of HIV.

In the major developed nations Drama education seems to be catering more and more for Broadway, the West End and Hollywood.   The emphasis seems to be shifting to theatrical product rather than Drama as a core pedagogical tool.  This brief article will attempt to show how we can reclaim the educational efficacy of Drama whilst maintaining the penchant for performance and theatre.

For the past few years I have entered my school into the YOHFest in Western Australia.  My reasons for this are easily articulated:

• focuses on classroom based Drama work;
• provides a focus beyond the Drama classroom;
• provides opportunities to integrate across learning areas;
• provides an extended audience;
• is well managed by amiable personnel who have youth as their focus;
• provides a vehicle for students to examine their own life choices;
• an inbuilt deadline that is not negotiable;
• demands a whole class approach, therefore necessitating students development of collaborative and co-operative strategies;
• focuses on student ownership of learning and creativity;
• allows all outcome strands in lower school to be addressed;
• allows for common assessment tasks to be overlayed in upper school classes;
• has an inbuilt incentive factor - students will get to perform to an audience of peers in a professional venue - works to activate student motivation;
• provides a high profile vehicle for advocacy of arts education within my school;
• provides for genuine "rich task" approach to learning in Drama;
• moves beyond arbitrary and segmented approach to learning;
• assists with the development of a "community culture" across all year levels in my Drama classes - seniors are actively involved with junior classes - in some cases extending the school's peer support programme.

How do I do it?

My basic approach is that we begin the year knowing that the class will devise an original drama based on the theme provided by the festival.   It is not always as linear as this description might suggest - the order of many steps is dependent on the organic development of the project.

Lower school classes will spend the best part of 3 terms involved in this process.  At two hours per week and about 20 uninterrupted weeks means they complete the entire rich task over 40 hours of class time.  My senior classes will get about 4 weeks with 4 hours per week - therefore completing the process in about 16 hours of class time. 

We start the year's activities with a regular range of establishment activities - theatre games, improvisation, introduction, trust and team-building activities. 

Having a thematic focus allows me to embed tangential or metaphorical issues into the work the students engage with.

When we start working on the theme, I almost always begin with a group discussion, asking what the students understand the theme to be about.  I then explain what the Festival brief states as the meaning of the theme.

We begin to explore through improvisations and theatre games what the students know about the theme.  Using simple situational drama the students are able to explore and demonstrate their understanding of the theme.  Throughout this phase I also incorporate and facilitate the ongoing development of performance and presentational skills and understanding, i.e. stagecraft, verbal and non-verbal elements, structure of improvisation, narrative devices, etc.

Students are now asked to discover what they DON'T know about the topic... what hasn't been considered, what is the basis for their current understanding, how much is fact and how much is myth, what evidence do they have to support their current knowledge of the theme.

Obviously, that leads to research.  Students are asked to find facts, figures, statistics, news articles, fiction and non-fiction accounts relating to the theme.  We explore our understanding of this new information.  Where in their lives do they see this evidence realised?  How is their understanding shifted?

We use some of the articles and stories as stimulus for "Living Newspaper" and other process/forum style explorations.   

We move to the phase where we start to explore what it is that the class wants to focus on in their original drama.   We decide on the major focus points and start to experiment with ways of presenting those in performance.  

We begin to develop a shape for our drama and then use improvisation and playbuilding strategies to develop an original script.  With older students I will sometimes impose conditions that they must observe - eg.  in 2002 my Year 11 class were required to include elements of Commedia dell'Arte in their group devised drama; this helped integrate the task into their Common Assessment Framework.

Once the script is created we enter the refinement and rehearsal phase.  In lower school classes I take over as director and cast the play based on my observations of student work to date.  There is sometimes the inevitable disappointed as someone may not get the role they expected... but that's all part of the rich tapestry.  With senior classes I facilitate the process but students are required to engage in an ensemble approach to finalising the performance.

Throughout the process, students are required to reflect upon, respond to and evaluate the work they are doing.  In upper school classes this is done through the required journal, in lower school I have taken to using a series of focus questions on a "Reflection Sheet"... these are completed every 3-4 weeks and after the project.

The performances - before we take our work to the festival we have a short season of showcase performances where all classes work together and present their work on an evening of public performances.  This provides the chance to see how our plays work in front of an audience, allow for adjustment and modification, acts as an advocacy event for the Arts program and let's parents and other staff see what students have been involved with in their Drama classes.

The trek to the festival venue is always interesting. We need to depart school at 6am.   This also assists with building community as kids arrange sleepovers and parental support.

We get to the venue, meet students form other schools, present our work, witness the work of other students, enjoy the experience and wait to see if we make the finals.  

The aftermath - at the end of the process we examine in detail the journey we undertook, the differences between the performances presented, the difficulties we encountered, the solutions we found, the merits and drawbacks of the process....

Interestingly, each year we have had at least one or two students who have failed to show up on the festival date - the bus trip to the venue provides the only opportunity for students to decide how they will overcome the deficit.  It is amazing to watch how creative and committed the students are at this stage.  Even more so to witness a student being thrust into learning a role on the way to the performance!

I won't pretend that this process is joyous throughout - it is a challenge all the way through... I have developed an amazing capacity for chaos and uncertainty... my students slowly discover that going for the jugular seldom solves problems.  In most cases they mature enormously and leaders emerge.  

I still have to deal with classroom management, student motivation and the regular dilemmas of a Drama teacher.  There are times when it seems hopeless and the project will never be completed; the students get frustrated by mixed levels of commitment and focus; other school priorities intrude into the process.  I think what I'm trying to say is that students are not shielded from the realities of life, but are also expected to use them as opportunities to extend their learning.

BUT!!  I have yet to have a class that say the outcomes are not worth the process.

RECOMMENDED WEBSITES

• YOHFEST - Youth on Health Festival

This Western Australian festival now enters its 7th year and has gone from strength to strength.  One of the major points of appeal is that it has not succumbed to the Rock Eisteddfod syndrome of getting so big and slick that many schools feel unable to meet the basic entry requirements, let alone standing a chance of having their work noticed.

Another aspect is that it deals with issues directly relevant to young people and provides opportunities for Drama classes to collaborate with other faculties, English, IT, Art, Social Studies, Health and Physical Education, even Maths and Science can get involved with some careful thought and planning. 

• Dementia on Stage

This event began in 2002 and is organised by the Alzheimer's Association of WA.  And again provides opportunities for teachers to extend learning opportunities for students.  Students are better to positioned to understand the role of Drama in education and the wider society.  Students also develop a greater understanding of the broad effects of Alzheimer's. 

• Amnesty International Youth Arts Festival

"Amnesty International Australia's 'Voices of Hope' Youth Arts Festival is a national event for secondary school students around the country, just like you.

Entering this festival gives you a chance to express your creativity and at the same time help organisations like Amnesty International remind Australians that refugee rights are human rights."

• News article at Kenya's "The Nation"

This article describes some of the outcomes of Kenya's national Drama festivals.  

"In a symbolic manner, using serious allegory and humour, Kakamega High was able to portray greed, tyranny, exploitation of the poor and discrimination of women."

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

• 4th International Drama in Education Research Institute (IDIERI)

Destabilising Distinctions and Definitions
14^th - 19^th July 2003

The aim [of the first IDIERI in 1995] was to critique different modalities of research design, to draw connections between them, and to probe how knowledge can be advanced by their application. The term ‘institute’ was chosen specifically to describe this interaction. An institute connotes a body which produces and promotes educational advancement, a place where ideas can be investigated and new visions proposed. An institute can become a beacon through which emerging understandings happen, where stereotypical notions can be challenged, where new beginnings occur.

RECOMMENDED RESOURCES

Imagining to Learn : Inquiry, Ethics, and Integration Through Drama

by Jeffrey D. Wilhelm, Brian Edmiston
A new book looking at Drama as an educational tool.

In Imagining to Learn, Jeffrey Wilhelm and Brian Edmiston demonstrate how drama taps into the  imagination to create powerful learning contexts. Imagining to Learn moves drama into the mainstream of elementary and middle school teaching, learning, and curriculum. It is filled with examples of how teachers and students together can create contexts that tap into students' energies, abilities, and questions-- --contexts where students can discover a reason to read, a  need to think, and a community that cares about their ideas.

Handbook of Educational Drama and Theatre
by Robert J. Landy

"Provides a detailed overview of the ways in which theater techniques are used to enrich the lives of many sections of the population. . . . The book's core is excellent interviews with practitioners. . . . Students seeking information about non-traditional drama careers will find this an essential handbook; and students, teachers, and professionals in traditional theater may well find wider horizons for their own work here. Each chapter's bibliography includes films, tapes, and the names and addresses of appropriate organizations. Appendixes list specialists in the US and UK, and there is a directory of selected college programs in both countries. Highly recommended for libraries at all levels."

Drama As a Meaning Maker
by Judith Kase-Polisini (Editor)

"A collection of over forty articles originally presented at a symposium at Rutgers University Graduate School of Education. Prominent theatre and drama specialists were invited to respond to papers by three nationally recognized scholars in related fields. Karl Pribram, noted neuropsychologist, M.D., author and professor at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University, discusses "Brain and Meaning." Author and cultural commentator Jamake Highwater speaks about "Meaning and the Child" from the point of view of a native American. And Jon Klimo, poet, author, psychologist and professor at the Rosebridge Institute Graduate School of Integrative Psychology, presents the final major paper, "The Lucid and the Ludic: Toward a Metaphysics of Meaning Making." The book also contains papers delivered in four discussion groups which followed each presentation, together with a summary of each group discussion so that the reader may enjoy the same intellectual dialogue as the participants." 

Kim Flintoff